Page 59 of Still the Sun

His brow buckles with agony, and my heart pumps a sharp pang into my core. “You merely don’t remember it, Nophe.”

“And that’s not atonement enough?”

He presses his lips together.

I pull away on feet of iron. “What does it mean?Nophe.You don’t say it right.” I’d understood some of their language before, and yet this word eludes me completely. My memories are still too piecemeal.

A feather of warmth touches his lips. “Nuffyis a strange name.” It’s how the end of my nameshouldbe pronounced.

I wait.

He sighs. “Nofeis a word in my native tongue. It meansgoddess.”

And he shuts the door, leaving me to my own echoing hollowness.

I loved him,I think, elbows on the table in my home, fingers turning mushy grain over with a spoon. The bowl of porridge sits full, oversoaked and underseasoned, waiting to be devoured. I hear others in Emgarden, about their tasks, socializing in the road, tending theiranimals, hollering to one another. The cacophony floats through my windows, providing an uneven ambiance to accompany my thoughts.

I force a bite of my meal down, but it does nothing to fill this gaping hole inside me.Something is missing.And I think I know what it is.

I’ve been looking at Heartwood differently the last few cycles. It would be childish to deny it. Foolish to think that, beyond the confusion and distress, I didn’t enjoy his mouth on mine. But it was the vision, thememory, of so much more, that shook me. It lasted less than a second, but in that second I was another Pell, and that other Pell loved Heartwood with everything she was. Even cutting out the emotion of it, I know. I do not give myself freely, nor easily. I trust that she didn’t, either.

You betrayed us.

My chest hurts enough for me to double over. I need to eat, but I’m not hungry. Maybe Salki or Amlynn can brew me a tincture to make me sleep. But you know who would probably be the best at that? Heartwood. He knows all kinds of things about plants.

Hey, would you mind drugging me?I could ask him.I would like to not think about us for a while.

He’d probably do it without complaint, too.

Groaning, I push the bowl away and stab my elbows into the table, cradling my head in my hands.

You betrayed us.

Pressing my lips together until they go numb, I stand, move the table, and pry up the floor, pulling out my hidden light machine.Did I?I’ve never stolen anything in my life—it’s one of the reasons Arthen’s accusations about his knife rankled me so much. Setting down the machine, I pull the knife from my pocket, examining the leather braiding on its hilt. Who’s stealing what, Heartwood? I still don’t know why he had this. Or why I did.

There’s something else I’m not remembering. Something important. But ...

Sighing, I stuff the blade in my pocket and hunt around for a piece of parchment. I don’t have anything clean, so I rip a fresh piece from my old artifact notes. I scrawl,Meet me in the garden.

He’ll know who it’s from.

I make myself dig up emily roots for the rest of the sun and into the mist. Moseus helps me sort through his collected scrap for wires for the pulley cable. I’ve only just started twisting them together when the mist begins to lift.

I slip the note under Heartwood’s door before grabbing my bag and heading to the canyon.

The mist has long dispersed by the time Heartwood comes. I sit in the shade beneath a drape of fairy wisps, my back to the red rock, not far from a poisonous chrystanus, my eyes closed, dozing but never truly sleeping. I open them when he approaches and reach for my bag.

Heartwood keeps his distance. “I do not think it’s wise—”

“Here.” I pull out the light machine and toss it to him. He almost drops it. “That’s what I have. The only thing in my house I can’t account for, that I might have taken from the tower. My blacksmith can confirm I never gave anything to him until the first load of scraps from Moseus, if you want to talk to him. I have a feeling I mentioned him before.”

Heartwood studies me, then the machine. Turns it over in his hands.

“There was a cog, too, but I found it here. Could have been you who took it.” I shrug. “I don’t know, but it’s in Machine Two now. It opened the lift.”

Running his hand over the frame, Heartwood says, “I don’t recognize any of this.”

“Machines One through Four are working,” I add, though he already knows. “Five was inaccessible, so it can’t be from there.”

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